Principal Financial Accountant

ROYAL BOROUGH OF KENSINGTON AND CHELSEA

Principal Financial Accountant RBKC609413

Job Summary:

Salary range: £62,502 – £71,445 per annum (Pending pay award)

Work location: London

Hours per week: 36

Contract type: Permanent

Closing date: 27th June 2023

Interview date: 7th July 2023

About Us:

Providing professional financial accounting and reporting services that maximise benefit to our local communities.

In Kensington and Chelsea, we put local people at the heart of decision-making, working in partnership with them to provide quality services that are responsive, effective and efficient. Our support services play a key role in helping the whole Council work to the best of its ability and ensure the Council can deliver on its priorities.

As a Principal Financial Accountant, you’ll work collaboratively with your peers across the Financial Management Division to achieve successful annual closure of accounts, external audit and statutory reporting. We’re embarking on an exciting journey to implement a new ERP system and in-house some key services, including VAT and CIS, from a managed service partner. As we don’t plan to go-live until October 2024, you’ll have the perfect opportunity to help design our processes to meet future business needs.

The Role:

This role supports all areas of the technical financial accounting function and is one of four Principal Financial Accountants on the Financial Reporting and Controls Team. The role will initially lead on producing cash and bank reconciliations, establishing VAT and CIS processes, completing statutory returns and other assigned areas of the annual closure of accounts and audit process. Lead responsibilities are rotated across the four Principal Financial Accountants and there will be opportunities to work on capital, revenue and balance sheet corporate accounting.

Please refer to the Job Description for more information.

About You:

Experience of VAT accounting in a public sector setting is essential, and you must have a thorough knowledge of the Making Tax Digital claim submission process. Understanding of the CIS supplier process would be desirable. You should be a qualified accountant who is familiar with financial accounting standards and processes.

You’ll be a confident communicator, in person and on paper, used to providing specialist technical accounting advice to budget holders and officers to support decision-making. Quick-thinking and influential, you’ll also have proven you can anticipate and collaboratively solve problems.

You’ll have experience of managing and leading staff to achieve high performance and effective operational delivery.

Please apply online explaining how you meet the requirements set out in the person specification and job description. CV’s alone will not be considered for this role.

We reserve the right to extend or close this vacancy early without warning subject to the volume of suitable applicants.

Application process

Please do not upload any documents, including CVs/Covering Letters or supporting statements, as these documents will not be reviewed and could result in your application not being shortlisted.

You should describe how you meet the person specification requirements for the position you are applying for in Section G of the application form.

Additional information

We are committed to promoting equality and respecting diversity and welcome applications from all sections of the community.

We are a Disability Confident Employer – committed to ensuring that our recruitment and selection process is inclusive and accessible.

We engage our staff with a variety of learning types including face-to-face and virtual learning because we want to ensure our staff understand our values and behaviours, grow their skills and develop their careers.

This post is covered by the Fluency Duty, as outlined in the Code of Practice on the English language requirements for public sector workers.

We do not accept speculative CVs from any source.

Please note, we will primarily contact candidates by e-mail throughout the recruitment process, please monitor your email junk / spam folder as our system generated emails may be allocated to these folders by your email settings.

If you experience difficulties with the recruitment application process, please contact the recruitment team by email: